


The Fall of Gods

by BernRul



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 11:53:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12189480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BernRul/pseuds/BernRul
Summary: As Tyrell waits to hear news about Elliot, he has to deal with his own guilt on top of the realization that he may not know Elliot as well as he thought.





	The Fall of Gods

**Author's Note:**

> I first had the idea after the season 2 finale, but the latest trailer inspired me to actually write it. Some dialouge was taken directly from the season 3 trailer.

  
This place was depressing. Not depressing in the way that most hospitals were—everything unnaturally sterile and white—but depressing because everything was so dark, derelict, gloomy. It was an abandoned building after all, what has once been a factory in its past life. Now the ceilings dripped, the pipes groaned, and cockroaches as big and thick as a thumb scuttled across the floor.

  
Tyrell was beginning to suspect that the Dark Army operated out of every abandoned building in New York. Tyrell had become intimately familiar with his share of them in the past few months that he’d been living under Dark Army’s protection.

  
Tyrell hadn’t seen Elliot in hours. Not since he’d shot him. The thought made his heart seize up, made him vaguely nauseous. It still didn’t feel real. One moment they’d been discussing Phase 2, standing together on the cusp of godhood. Then, out of nowhere, Elliot started going on about deleting it and Tyrell not being real, and everything went to hell.

Elliot wasn’t going to die, he assured himself. They’d gotten to him in time, he hadn’t bled out. That was what mattered. Tyrell ran his hands through his tangled hair. He knew that it was greasy, that he stunk from wearing the same clothes for two days straight. Surprisingly, he didn’t care. Many formerly important things—his appearance, his wealth, become CTO—didn’t matter anymore, all thanks to the former AllSafe tech who had come into his life last spring.

  
Tyrell sat on a cot with too many mystery stains to count, alone, in the ghost of what had once been a bustling center of mass production, but was now just another base for the Dark Army. He had been told to wait, that they’d keep him updated, but he could no longer remember how long ago that was. The Dark Army had been generous enough to supply him with his preferred brand of vodka. He drowned the bottle with gusto. Developing a drinking problem was severely underrated, Tyrell decided. It was the only thing that helped keep him nice and numb when his thoughts turned to Elliot, how he’d looked as the bullet pierced his stomach, the expression on his face as he lay bleeding on the dirty floor…

  
He remembered when Elliot gave him that damn gun. That night would be seared into his brain forever, the night that they had become gods. They were alone in that tacky arcade, in front of the terminal. Tyrell was filled with a kind of wonder he’d never known before, power he hadn’t felt even as acting CTO, or when he’d snuffed a woman’s life out with his bare hands. Their actions—his and Elliot’s, but mostly Elliot’s, he wasn’t too arrogant to acknowledge that—would impact every life on the planet.

  
Elliot, however, wasn’t one to bask in the afterglow.

  
“Tyrell.”

  
He found himself staring down the barrel of a gun. His heart jackhammered, but it was a mix of excitement with the fear. Elliot flipped the gun over, catching the barrel with no regard for proper gun safety.  
“Take this,” he said, “and use it on anyone who tries to stop our plans. And I mean _anyone_. Do you understand?”

  
Tyrell nodded mutely, because he thought he did. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  
Elliot stared directly into his eyes. He didn’t blink. His eyes were unusually large, Tyrell noted, staring back, and a fascinating shade of gray. He wanted to get lost in those eyes.

  
And then Elliot’s mouth was on his, and he was in heaven. Elliot was no gentleman; he was rough, brutish, shoving Tyrell against the popcorn machine and thrust his tongue into Tyrell’s mouth. He couldn’t say how long it lasted. Elliot’s tongue explored his mouth, pushing in as far as it could go, almost down his throat. He bit down on his lip, enough to draw blood, but Tyrell didn’t register the pain.

  
It was just a kiss. Tyrell had been inside a man before, and his proclivities with Joanna were by no means vanilla, but that one kiss with Elliot blew him away. It stayed with him long after they’d gone their separate ways, Elliot to prison and Tyrell to begin his life as a fugitive.

  
How could Elliot forget all of that?

  
He heard the tapping sound of high heels against the concreate. For a moment he thought it was White Rose, but this woman was much younger, blonde, and had the cutthroat CEO look down pat. Angela. He’d only recently met Angela—she was their newest member, he supposed—but she’d already imbedded herself into the group like a virus, giving off an aura of authority, like she’d been there from day one (he remembered their phone call, _I love him_ , choked out of him, words he hadn’t even said to Elliot yet, and now she had them, this ammunition over him, something the old Tyrell would never have allowed. Jesus, Tyrell, what the hell happened to you?).

  
“He’s awake,” Angela said. Those two words set off a flurry of questions in Tyrell’s mind. _Is he lucid? Does he remember what happened? Does he blame me? Oh, God, he blames me, doesn’t he?_

  
Instead he settled on: “How is he?”

  
“He’s fine,” Angela said. “Well, not ‘fine,’ exactly, but as fine as can be expected given the circumstances. He’s talking and he seems to understand what happened to him.”

  
;Something about her words (“he understands”) made Tyrell crumble. He didn’t’ cry again, thank God, but his words came out in jerky, ragged breaths.

  
“I warned him—I told him to step away. He made me shoot him. He kept saying I wasn’t real. It was almost as if he were a—” Tyrell snapped his fingers in frustration, “different person.”

  
“You’re right. He sometimes can become a different person.”

  
Tyrell wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  
“Elliot’s mind doesn’t work like most people. Mostly that’s good—it’s why he’s so brilliant. But sometimes he changes…like he’s two different people.”

  
“What are you saying? That he has a split personality?” Tyrell asked incredulously.

  
“I know it sounds hokey,” Angela said, “but it’s not far from the truth. He can’t remember things, his personality shifts, and sometimes he acts like the complete opposite of who he once was.”

  
Tyrell supposed that made sense in a twisted kind of way. It didn’t make him feel better. The idea that Elliot could forget about his time with Tyrell, forget the memories he cherished, and morph into some stranger who hadn’t become gods with him, who in fact wanted to destroy that vision—well, that was hard for him to stomach.

  
“He said that you can see him,” Angela said, startling him. “If you’re up to it.”

  
Tyrell, in fact, was terrified, but he didn’t want to show it. He’d lost his composure around Angela enough times already. Her impression of him must have been of a sniveling, hapless child. So he nodded, curtly, and walked past her to the door at the end of the hall, a decrepit, decaying place that served as Elliot’s hospital room.

  
The room was empty—soot-coated gray walls and very little light—except for the reclining bed and machines hooked up to Elliot’s arms. It was utterly depressing, but Tyrell could only focus his gaze on the man lying in the bed.

  
He looked paler than usual, though that may have been Tyrell’s imagination. His eyes were half-lidded, staring off into nothing, but they widen, slightly at Tyrell’s appearance.

  
“Hello,” Elliot said. His voice sounded hoarse, like he hadn’t had a sip of water all day, but still sounded surprisingly strong for having just been shot—

  
Don’t think about that.

  
“Bonsoir, Elliot.”

  
Silence for a moment, until Elliot broke it in the worst possible way.

  
“You shot me.”

  
He said it flatly, no accusation or venom, but Tyrell flinched as if he’d been slapped.

  
He swallowed. “I did. You told me to. I didn’t want to, Elliot, I didn’t—”

  
He cut himself off before he could dissolve any further. His eyes stung with unshed tears, so he took a deep breath to steady himself.

  
“I know. I told you to,” Elliot said robotically. It sounded like he was reciting a script; Tyrell couldn’t discern his emotions, couldn’t tell if this was a positive or negative.

  
Elliot closed his eyes again. Tyrell wasn’t sure what to do. He itched to hold Elliot’s hand, but he froze midair, his hand hovering uselessly over the hospital bed. He had no idea how Elliot would react: would he flinch away, welcome the touch, curse him out? For God’s sake, he had literally strangled a woman to death; it shouldn’t be torture to grab a man’s hand.

  
Elliot’s hand felt surprisingly warm. They were more calloused than he’d expected from a man who worked with computers. Elliot didn’t say a thing, didn’t open his eyes, but he didn’t let go, either. And maybe he imaged it (after all, he wasn’t entirely sober), but he could have sworn that Elliot squeezed his hand back.

  
It was enough. For now.


End file.
